General Election 2015: Ed Miliband comes out smiling in opposition leaders’ big BBC TV debate
It was a big night for Ed Miliband. Going into a debate of the opposition party leaders, he had to prove that he was the Prime Minister in waiting at the same time as taking friendly fire from other left-wing parties, and anti-Westminster shots from Nigel Farage.
Agreeing to debate was definitely a risk for the Labour leader, but it seems to have paid off, with him winning a snap poll after the event.
In fact Miliband seems to have so enjoyed the experience that he used his closing statement to challenge David Cameron to “debate me” in a head-to-head stand off.
At times last night though, it felt like he was having that face-off already, with Nicola Sturgeon.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) leader laid out her vision for “a more progressive voice in Westminster for everyone”, and said the SNP would not support Labour implementing Tory-lite policies.
Miliband was compelled to lay out his differences with her in one of the night’s key exchanges.
The SNP team were happy with their boss’s work at the end of the evening. “She showed herself to be the real leader of the opposition,” said Humza Yousaf, an SNP minister.
Nigel Farage, rather a lone wolf in this set-up, positioned himself as the man of the people.
“I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be the only person here to say what a lot of you at home are thinking,” he said down the barrel of the camera.
Unfortunately not many of the people he thought he was talking to were in the audience.
Ukip tried to chalk the lukewarm reaction in the room up to BBC bias. The party’s Paul Nuttall speculated that some people may have been “disingenuous” in their applications to get into the audience.
[custom id=”1″]